FreePOPs
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| Original author(s) | Caprari, Cocchiaro, Schwager, Tassi, and Vellei |
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| Initial release | 30 April 2004 |
| Stable release | 0.2.9 / 27 December 2008 |
| Operating system | Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, BeOS |
| Platform | Cross-platform |
| Available in | C, Lua |
| Type | |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | FreePOPs.org |
FreePOPs is an extensible mail proxy. Its primary use is to allow checking and downloading of e-mail from webmails from any conventional POP3 client program, avoiding the need to use a Web browser. It can also be used as an aggregator for RSS feeds and more.
This application retrieves all your messages from various accounts (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL …) without manual login through an http page.
FreePOPs is a POP3 daemon with a Lua interpreter and some extra libraries for HTTP and HTML parsing. Its main purpose is translating local POP3 requests (from a local e-mail client for example) to remote HTTP actions on the supported webmails, but it is more flexible than that. For example, a plugin is available that allows receiving news from a website as if they were e-mail messages in a mailbox. Most plugins work by screen scraping the target website.[1] FreePOPs can be extended on the fly: plugins can be added or existing ones can be modified by simply changing the relevant script file.
The software is supported by an active community forum.[2]
FreePOPs offers a way of dealing with a webmail as though it were a regular POP3 mailbox. Many webmail providers require you to use a web browser to read and collect your mail. That process can be slow. As an alternative, any mail software client coupled with FreePOPs can do this in the background effectively; for this purpose, FreePOPs can be combined with programs such as PopTray, getmail or Mozilla Thunderbird, to allow scheduled checking of both POP3 mailboxes and webmails in the background.
FreePOPs is Free Software, being released under the GNU GPL License. It uses the open source library libCURL as its browser component, and OpenSSL or GnuTLS for encryption.
Operating systems
FreePOPs is available on most consumer operating systems, whether included in official software distributions (as is the case with Linux), or in the form of installer packages provided by developers or users.
Usage
Normally you use an E-mail client application (such as Microsoft Outlook) to get your email from your service provider. If your service provider is telecomxxx.com, then your email address is something like John.Smith@telecomXXX.com. However you may have an email account with other free webmail services. To retrieve emails sent to one free webmail service you connect to their server and log into your account. FreePOPs automatically retrieves all of your emails from each account.
References
- ^ Krawetz, Neal (2007). Hacking Ubuntu: Serious Hacks Mods and Customizations. Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-470-10872-7.
- ^ Rozen, Avi (2007-10-03). "Read webmail from any email client with FreePOPs". Linux.com. Retrieved 2009-01-17.
External links
- Freepops.org
- Diludovico.it, User forum
- E-link.it, Unofficial graphical front-end for Mac OS X -
